A comment in the SZ hence warns cities and municipalities to cut the culture budgets under the influence of current financial pressure: These cuts may seem quick and easy but could have devastating indirect effects.

After years of negotiating, anxious waiting, a court ruling, and more anxious waiting, the Detroit Institute of Art’s collection was finally saved from being sold off in the wake of the city of Detroit’s bankruptcy. I had the pleasure to sit next to the DIA’s director Graham Beal during a dinner in November, and I repeat here: Chapeau. Now he has announced plans to retire. read here

The theatre and orchestral landscape in Germany is unique: 140 municipal, state and regional theaters; 131 classical orchestras, plus some 220 private theaters and around 150 theaters and performance venues without a permanent ensemble. Cicero has analyzed the vast offering as well as its allegedly looming death, playhouses being caught between continuous budget squeezes, shifting political attention and paralyzing corsets of tradition.